The Long Way Round

An original short story written for Revision Library.

[1] On the morning of Founder's Day, Elmridge Grange always smelled of wet grass and hot chocolate, and this particular October felt no different, except that today the mist over Hartcliffe Moor refused to lift no matter how long the whole school stood shivering at the start line. Priya Adjei checked her lace for the third time, though it had not come loose since the first, and told herself firmly that nerves were only ever useful if you let them be. Her house, Kestrel, had not won the Founder's Cup relay since her older brother Dexter had crossed the line first two years running, and every teacher who caught her eye that morning seemed to expect her to manage the same trick, as though talent for running four gruelling miles across open moorland could simply be passed down a family like a surname. The starting horn, when it finally sounded, cut through the mist like something breaking.

[2] The first mile suited her. Priya settled into the rhythm she had drilled all September, breathing evenly as the path narrowed between two dry stone walls and the ground climbed steadily towards Hartcliffe's rocky summit. Ahead of her, unmistakable in Falcon House's yellow vest, ran Callum Whitfield, the only runner all season who had ever beaten her over this exact course, and she fixed her eyes on his retreating back the way a sailor fixes on a lighthouse. By the second checkpoint she had drawn level, and for one glorious half-mile they ran stride for stride in silence, neither willing to waste breath on words, both perfectly aware that the Founder's Cup rarely stayed decided until the final descent.

[3] It was on the boggy stretch below Hartcliffe's summit, where the marked path all but vanished into tussocks of rushes and standing brown water, that Priya lost sight of Callum around a bend and then, moments later, heard him. Not a shout for encouragement, not the usual grunt of effort, but a short, sharp cry that stopped as abruptly as it started. She found him a few strides further on, sitting awkwardly against a fence post with one ankle already swelling visibly above his sock, his face the pale grey of the sky above them. There was no marshal in sight; the course looped wide here specifically to avoid the worst of the bog, and the nearest checkpoint tent was a good fifteen minutes' walk away even without an injury slowing things down. Wind pulled at the mist, tugging thin grey scarves of it across the moor, and somewhere behind her Priya could hear the thud of other runners' feet growing steadily louder.

[4] For perhaps three seconds, no more, Priya stood frozen between two futures. In one, she left Callum where he was, certain that a marshal would find him soon enough, and ran on to finish what might be Kestrel's best chance in years, finally matching what Dexter had done and, in some quiet corner of her mind, finally becoming something more than his younger sister. In the other, she stayed, and every runner behind her, including at least two from her own house, swept past towards a finish line she would not reach anywhere near the front. It was Callum himself, gritting his teeth against what was clearly considerable pain, who broke the silence. 'Go,' he said, not quite managing to sound as though he meant it. 'I'll be fine.' Priya looked at the empty, wind-scoured moor around them, at the fifteen minutes it would take help to arrive, and did not go.

[5] She crouched down, looped Callum's arm firmly over her shoulders, and hauled him upright against the fence post, ignoring his protest that he could manage alone. Between them they worked out a slow, lopsided rhythm, Callum hopping and wincing on his good leg while Priya took as much of his weight as she could, and together they picked their way down the boggy slope towards the nearest checkpoint. Runner after runner overtook them, some calling out to check they were all right, one older Sixth Former stopping just long enough to radio ahead before jogging on. By the time they reached the checkpoint tent, Priya's own legs had stiffened uselessly from the awkward, unfamiliar strain of half-carrying another person across broken ground, and the last of the field had already streamed past towards the finish.

[6] Kestrel finished the relay in fifth place that year, its worst result in a decade, and Priya crossed the line so far behind the leaders that the finish-line tape had already been taken down. She braced herself, walking up the final stretch, for the disappointment she felt sure would be waiting on the faces of her housemates, and for the inevitable comparison to Dexter that never quite went away. Instead, she found her whole house crowded round the medical tent where Callum sat with his ankle strapped and elevated, and it was Callum, not any teacher, who had already told them exactly why she was last. Dexter, when she finally found him in the crowd, said nothing about the Cup at all. He simply looked at her for a long moment, the way people look at something they had not quite expected, and said that he had never once, in either of his winning years, done anything half as difficult as what she had just done.